Get ready to learn the secrets behind building loyal, profitable customer relationships. In this insightful interview, Craig Arthur draws on decades of marketing experience to break down the difference between transactional and relational customers. Discover tactics for transitioning your more fickle transactional customer base into reliable, high-value relational buyers who will stick with you for the long haul. You’ll also learn why clearly defining your business’s guiding values and purpose is crucial for appealing to relational customers on a deeper level. Craig shares real life stories and examples that bring these concepts to life in an engaging way. Whether you’re looking to find your business’s North Star or hoping to form stronger connections with your existing customers, this episode will give you eye-opening ideas to transform your approach to customer relationships from superficial to loyal for life. Tune in now to begin building the foundation for highly profitable, mutually trustworthy and committed bonds with your customers.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Connect and Convert.

The Sales Accelerator podcast, where every week you learn insider tips,

insider secrets to grow your sales.

I'm Dennis Collins, and as always, I'm joined by my colleague, say hello, Leah

Bumphrey from sunny Saskatoon up in Canada.

Good to see everybody.

Sunny Saskatoon, this is going to be a fun episode.

We're gonna do something a little special.

We normally don't do this, but we only when we do do it it's because

we have someone special as a guest.

"How to Win the Hearts, Money, and Loyalty of Profitable Customers".

Wow.

That's a big promise.

101 Relational Marketing Principles, episode one.

A Wizard of Ads marketing guide.

We know the guy who wrote this.

This guy is a colleague of ours.

Yes.

There it is.

That's him.

He's also, no one's perfect, but he's an Aussie.

That's okay.

We love.

Well said.

We love Aussie well, we'll take him anyway.

We'll take him anyway.

But I like the way he describes himself.

I'm an Aussie.

I love a good glass of red.

Doesn't every Aussie.

I love a joke and I like a laugh.

I love spending time with my family and friends.

I take my work seriously, but not myself.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce to you a man who

has decided in his life to make a difference from down under the

man, from down under Craig Arthur.

Hello, Craig.

That, that, that was certainly a big intro.

Thank you very much Dennis, and thank you Leah.

Well, we're glad you're here.

I mean, this, you know, it's tough.

We have people on, in three different countries, two different continents.

I mean, this is, oh, that's right.

This is hard to arrange.

Uh, producer Boomer had to do a lot of stuff to make this

work, but I'm glad you're here.

Thank you.

And it's, and Paul might have to put subtitles underneath

my, um, my accent so that...

yeah, you can understand what I'm talking about.

Oh, we love it.

We love it.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that, that's being accused of having an accent today.

Well, thankfully.

And you, and you spell color the same way as I do, so that's good.

I'm glad.

Yeah.

You guys do have a lot in common.

Well, again, I.

Must tell you, Craig, I am fascinated with your book from the first copy that you

sent me back in, uh, late to the 2023.

I have just looked at every page.

We could do a whole podcast on every page.

I.

It's self-contained.

It's complete.

Yep.

We could do a whole podcast on there, but we don't have time for that.

So tonight we're gonna have to figure out what to leave out because I wouldn't wanna

leave out anything, but unfortunately we're gonna have to leave something else.

Okay.

101 principles.

Wow.

No fluff, no BS.

One principle per page.

That's what I like.

One principle per page with bonuses ah yes special bonuses.

Apply a principle to your business.

Then pick another.

Leave aside what you don't like, what you don't need.

Love it.

Love it.

I would like to kind of start off.

Some of our viewers, listeners probably don't know too much about

relational and transactional customers.

I know the first time I heard that concept, I think from Roy

Williams back in the dark ages, I said, wow, that explains a lot.

I see your book as kind of a manual for relational marketing.

So why don't we start with a definition first.

What is relational marketing?

What is transactional marketing?

Why are they different?

Hmm.

Okay.

Transactional and relational basically come down to, um, well,

if you look at customers, I, I get my hair cut every four weeks for the

last twenty-four years from the one barber or the one hairdresser, right.

I pay more.

My wife's always saying, why do you pay so much?

And it's, it's like that is a very relational purchase.

I.

I, I like the guy, I like the way that I get welcomed, the way that I have

my cup of tea there, the way that, um, they wash my hair, the way they

do everything and the way I look.

I look exactly the same when I come out 24 years in a row.

So I'm willing to pay more because I feel good about this, um, business.

And I, I trust him and I believe he's the best in the business for me now.

Sure.

That's, that's very much a relational, um, purchase.

Now, when I go to the shops and I buy, um, shaving cream, I

tend to buy what's on special.

I can.

I just, because to me, a shaving cream, shaving cream or shaving gel, so I have

no feelings towards any particular brand.

I'm just looking for.

Look, they're all gonna do the same thing, so I'm just gonna buy it on price.

Um, so I am transactional.

We're not just one way or the other.

I'm transactional in lots of things and relational in lots of others.

I, I have a Mac, so I'm very much a relational buyer

when it comes to computers.

Um, there, there's something that, there's, do you have a Mac?

Dennis?

Uh, yeah, that's all that I use.

That's it.

Leah.

I'm not talking to you guys.

I don't have a Mac.

My husband never, he was an IT guy.

He's told me all about you Mac people, man.

Now that I know that, I don't know if I can continue.

This under

of the conscience here.

We're under, we're under, we're under attack.

Craig, we're under assault here.

Well see.

We believe we, we stand for something and we stand for what MAC stands for

and it's, we're attracted to that.

Mac is very much a well, it used to be the one for creatives,

the, the computer for, yeah.

Um, the people who are a little bit different, they

like to do things differently.

Um, not the boring, boring, um.

Um, office workers.

I saw tho I saw those ads.

Just to be clear, I have an Apple phone moving on from the whole computer thing.

I've got a question for you, Craig.

The first time you went to your barber, why did you vote?

Yes.

Okay.

Why did you go now again, very first time.

This, this comes down to relational because I used to be looking for someone

I could trust and I kept going to different people and I wasn't happy.

But how do we get, um, word of mouth at work?

I said, look, I'm looking for a, um, someone to do my hair.

And my sales manager at the time said, um, my friends do it.

And that's how I ended up there because we, we tend to trust people

that are close to us, don't we?

So from a sales perspective, that one conversation led to I've bought this guy

a car with what I've paid for my hair.

So he has got a small car.

Over the 24 years, but it all came from that one conversation and that,

that I trusted my sales manager.

And, but mind you, they lived up to what, what she told me.

Um, so getting back to transaction, relational transactional shopping

mode, as I said, we were in both transactional shopping mode is I have

no predisposition to any, um, business.

I am, I'm just looking for the lowest price, or I'm just looking

for, it can be convenience, um.

Transactional, you can just be, look, I don't like particularly like this

fast food, um, place, but guess what?

It's the only one here.

So, um, I'll buy from them.

But relational is when you are looking for a longterm commitment to a business.

That's where my, I buy Mac long-term.

I've had Mac now for.

23 years.

Um, so relational is very much, it's a bit like friends.

We tend to have friends that we like and trust.

Now, Dennis, I met you personally last year and we talked about tennis

and we had a connection with tennis.

And I liked the way you talked, I liked the way you, um, just your whole demeanor

and I just felt comfortable around you.

So to me that that's a relationship and I just felt.

Good about being in the conversation with you.

So a transactional, my father is an extremely transactional at everything.

He just goes for the lowest price and then he has lots of dramas

afterwards, only from the fact that he always gets the lowest I price

provider and he gets what he pays for.

Um, but I'm looking for someone I like and trust looking for the

brands that I know I feel good about.

So a business can be relational, transactional.

Um, I worked in radio and I think both of you guys did as well.

And indeed the company I worked with was very transactional in their staff.

They didn't really care about their staff.

They were just like cannon fodder.

It was, we can just replace you easily The.

The, um, customers were like that as well, just sell to the sell sell, um, and we'll

just get another one if they don't buy.

And so that to me was against my values because I was very relational.

How can I help these business owners succeed?

And so I actually suffered more or less like a breakdown.

One day I literally cried in my corn flakes because my values of,

do you have corn flakes in America?

We, yeah, yeah.

We got cornflakes.

They're nothing worse than having soggy cornflakes, and

especially with tears in them.

So I, because why I was crying in my cornflakes was, was really because my

values of helping people, long-term commitment, um, delivering what we promise

went against the values of the company I was working for, and that caused stress.

That caused me angst.

It caused it like.

Depression.

And so Wow.

If you are working, I, I just couldn't work there and that's when

I, um, actually found Wizard of Ads.

'cause I was looking for something, how does this work?

And I'm looking for an expert I can trust.

And that's how I found the Wizard of Ads company, Roy H.

Williams, who wrote the bestselling trilogy.

Um, and I went to Wizard Academy.

And I know that they're a sponsor of your program.

Yeah.

And so I found them very relational.

Um, and a company that, and I've been going back there for now.

I've been a partner since 2001.

So I've been going there for 24 years.

24.

24 years.

You were the first partner actually.

Yeah.

I was the first partner.

It was just, just timing was, timing was a good thing.

You must start in something that, something that Roy

liked or you wouldn't have been.

Yeah.

Be more than timing.

Knowing Roy, he, he saw you as being the right person.

Yeah.

But I, well, while you're on this time, you've, you've opened up a

bunch of doors that I, I wanna try to go in, but, but there's one in particular.

Let's talk again about relational customers and transactional customers.

So, I'm a small business owner.

And I find that my customers tend to act in a transactional way.

Okay.

Is there anything I can do to either, number one, change them to relational

type customers or can, what is the loss I'm going to suffer if I throw them out

and go after only relational customers.

It is, it's a very good question.

And Dennis, just assuming your business that you said you're in business,

you've probably been running advertising that promotes sales and discounts

and short-term, short-term buys.

So you are attracting the transactional mindset customer because they

think Dennis is the business where I can go and get a deal.

I can beat Dennis, I'm going to, um, buy this product cheaper than anywhere else.

And I don't care whether Dennis is in business next week.

I just want to.

I wanna win.

And so it's marketing, that's it Deals with Dennis.

Um, so your marketing is attracting these people.

Now, if you want to, as I said, we're all relational and transactional in different,

different product categories, but, if you change your advertising to start

talking in a relational mindset, you'll actually start attracting the people

who I call 'em profitable customers.

Because a relational customer is willing to pay full price.

They're willing to keep coming back and be a regular customer, so a lot of the

times it happens that the business owner, the messages that he's sending out or

she's sending out, are attracting either relational, transactional customers.

Um, look, you can be profitable and make, and do well in both categories.

So there's, in Australia, there's lots of, um electrical, like computer

shops, and all they do is just run price products, sale type advertising.

Is that the same in the States?

It's, that's typical.

Yeah.

We have, uh, I don't know if they do this in Canada or Australia,

but here we have a long list of car dealers, automotive dealers, and of

course they're always the biggest.

They're the best.

They have the most selection.

They have this, they have that, they have everything.

Uh, and that's, and these guys are in business, Craig,

and they make a ton of money.

Do you guys have those kind of ads in Australia?

Yeah.

Now what happens?

The whole category does it, so they all copy each other.

It's a whole category.

Yeah, they do.

The whole category copies each other, and so they all say, well,

this is the way it's done, and.

A transactional business.

And if you're looking at a transactional relational ad, a transactional ad to

me is very much about the price, the product, and the, and the business.

So we're the biggest, we're the best.

And this is, the price is very much a transactional because it's,

it's not customer focused at all unless you want attract a customer

who wants to get the lowest price.

You're just talking about yourself.

So transactional radio people weren't, we were told to go out

and we just had a proposal with we are number one in this category.

We are this, we are that, we are this.

And it's all about the company, not the customer.

So that's transactional business.

They're focused on themselves and they're focused on the product, a

relational business and a relational, um, marketing or advertising

it tends to be people focused.

It's focused on creating that relationship.

It can be ads that run, putting the customer in the ad so that they can

see how the, the product or service is gonna solve their problems, but it's

making them the star of the ad, or it's talking about the business owners.

We took call 'em origin stories.

Um.

Things that all of a sudden people listen and go, wow, that's amazing.

I, I feel good about these people.

So that to me is the difference.

Most ads in electrical computers and cars tend to be very transactional

because they think that all customers are like their mindset, whereas, no,

there is the relational customer.

Now you can cause a problem.

I think one of the, I don't know the exact, um, details, but

wasn't it one of the CEOs of Apple went over to a, um, a big, uh.

Um, what do you call it?

A department store in America.

And he tried to bring in relational customers.

But if you try and do it too fast, if you've got a lot of

transactional customers and you just change overnight, they're

going to go, whoa, what's going on?

'cause they expect sale, sale, sale.

And if you take that away, it can.

So it, you asked that question.

There is a transition, um, but.

You'll find that in most categories, by being relational, you'll stand out

purely from the fact that everyone else is being very transactional.

They just talk about themselves.

Indeed.

Well, it's a process, right?

Like it's a process to get there, especially if you've been doing

something else and I think of the title of your book, you're talking about

winning loyalty, winning their hearts.

Yes, you can make a living.

Mm-hmm, selling transactionally, but that's not where your heart was.

In writing this book, you're not looking for those kinds of clients to help them.

You're, you're looking at the process of, let's, let's do this because it's the

right thing in the right way and take it away from just being about an exchange of

money, you know, and the cheapest exchange of money, like what your dad experiences.

Let's do this in a way where we're loyal to each other, where if

I know that you are looking for something, I'm gonna give you a shout.

And if you are looking for something, you're gonna call me

because you know, I would do that.

Yeah, if I have a problem with plumbing or electrical

or air conditioning, I've got a guy and I only saw a meme the other

day, when you get to my age, you seem to have a guy for everything.

Um, but I've got a guy for that that I trust, and I don't look at price.

I don't ask price.

I just.

Get him to do it.

You do it.

Um, you just do it.

So, so, so the the transition though,

the transition is tough.

It sounds like if you're a transactional business and you say, gee whiz, I think

relational advertising and relational customers is a better way to hire profit.

You are going to have a painful period.

Perhaps.

There may be some pain in there.

We call it.

Yeah, it is pain, but Dennis, if you wanna get fit or if you wanna lose

weight or if you want to do anything, there's pain involved, isn't there?

There's um, like, like we were discussing tennis, if you want to be very good at

tennis, there's a lot of pain and agony and and time involved in making that

transition to learning how to play.

So we call it.

In, um, Wizard of Ads, the chickening out period, which basically is,

you're running, you're running relational advertising, you're running

relational marketing, but what happens?

You don't seem to see anything happening and you tend to chicken

out when you go, well, you know, it's two to three months in and I'm not

really seeing any difference yet.

I'm spending all this money, but they're not coming in.

But we always say, look, it's like planting a crop.

It's like planting seeds.

You don't plant seeds and expect them to pop up the next day.

And if they don't come up, you say, well, that's not working.

Let's buy some new seeds.

You know that things take time.

And it really comes down to product purchase cycle is a big thing that a

lot of business people don't understand.

If your product, if you are selling mattresses in your, um,

make a deal with Dennis store.

It could be seven years before a person buys a new mattress.

Now, naturally you might have three or four bedrooms, so they could be

buying three or four in that time.

But people are listening to your ads, they're liking your ads, they're hearing

your ads, they're feeling good about you, but at the moment, they actually

don't have a need for a new bed.

Um, so it does take time.

Restaurants see things happen really quickly.

Why?

'cause we eat out all the time.

And so product purchase cycle comes into that um chickening out period.

It takes a while for momentum to come, hap to happen, but once momentum happens, then

it just gets better and better and better.

Most people though, like exercise, like diet, like relational marketing,

all pull out because they experience pain and they're not seeing the

results they expect Right quick.

I like that.

The chickening out period.

I think you've explained this, uh, as well as I've ever heard it

explained, and I, I, I appreciate you.

Do you, you spend a lot of time in the book for those who are gonna

run out and get this book, and you should, you spend a lot of time in

the book talking about this, and so I highly recommend because there are 101

principles, we can only talk about a few.

But I did wanna jump to another one that, that hit me.

It's principle number one.

There's the book, Profitable Consciousness Principle number one, your North Star,

an adventure, the direction you choose.

It never moves, it never changes.

It's always out of reach.

It always drives you forward.

You have an interesting story in the book about your North Star.

I'd love to hear, I think our listeners and viewers would love to hear that story

and they would also love to hear, what the heck is all this about North Star?

Uh, why do you need to have it?

How do you arrive at it?

Do you look up in the sky and meditate or something?

How does, how does that happen?

And, and tell a fair story.

Okay.

Uh, just quickly, my story, we moved around a lot when I was a kid.

Dad was with construction.

So the first two years of, um, the first two years of my schooling, I ended

up having like six schools and I was always the new kid and I was really,

I scared every time I walked into a school ground, I was, um, new kid.

I got picked on a lot.

'cause that's the easy thing to do.

Pick on the new kid, isn't it?

And I was little.

Yeah.

Like I'm six, one and a half now, but I didn't grow till after I left high school.

Um, so I.

I was always because I was picked on.

I think that's where I learned empathy and help towards other people because

now when I see other people that need help, you can see in their eyes

just in their manner that they need help or they, they're on the out.

I like to help those people and it's.

When I say my North Star, I guess my whole life has been devoted to then helping

other people and in those days fit in.

But as I said in the book, now, it's helping them stand out because as you

know, in marketing, the job is not to fit in and be like everyone else.

The job is to stand out so that for sure it, you make it easy for people

to select you, um, or to buy from you.

But the North Star.

When people used to, in the Northern Hemisphere, in the Southern

Hemisphere, we have the Southern Cross.

So Southern Cross, it just doesn't, it just doesn't have the

same appeal as Southern Cross.

And the North Star is one that it never moves around.

It's always in the same position.

The Southern cross moves everywhere.

So it's like, yeah, this is hard.

You need to try and find the Southern Cross.

But it's a directional pointer.

The North Star lines up with the what the, um.

At the center of the poles and basically it doesn't move.

Mm-Hmm.

So Christopher Columbus and all the sailors used the North Star as

a guide because once you leave the harbor, you leave sight of land.

What have you got?

And in those days at night, um, you've got the sun through the day,

but the North Star is the guide.

You can actually use that to keep you on track 'cause the waves and the

wind hit you and knock you around.

And it's the same in life.

The other day I wrote a post about do you want to be miserable?

Do you want to be happy now?

I wanna be happy.

I said, focus on what you do have, focus on past successes.

Focus on your achievements.

Focus on where you're going.

Focus on the process to get you there, um, and focus on your staff

and customers if you're in business.

Now, if you do that, that's where you're focusing and where you're looking.

But it's, it's easy to lose, lose sight of that.

You can have a, something happen and you start to feel like,

oh gee, I'm not good enough.

And you start to lose track of, no, this is where I want to go.

So the North Star is just the direction you want to go.

It's guiding you.

So I like helping people is just my big North Star specifically.

Its business people.

Um.

So how does a business, uh, find its North Star?

What, what's the pro, I'm sure you've done this with many businesses.

How do you do that?

It really comes down to, I guess again, the,

the values of the business.

The, what direction does the, the business owner want to go, because every,

everyone's got a different North Star.

What's Dennis your.

From listening to your podcast Sales and Ethical Persuasion, which is I love that.

Um, you talk about all the time, that is something that's guiding you, isn't it?

To do things ethically, you know, you can do the same as we pointed out,

and I think he pointed out in, um, how do you pronounce the, the, the author

of that book, um, persuasion Cini.

Chaldini, Rob Robert Chaldini.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now as he said, you, it's like the force in Star Wars.

You can use it for good or bad.

So the North Star is, I'm gonna use it for good and if I'm getting

off and starting to lose and go bad, no, I'm going back to that.

So you decided to use sales, which a lot of people would probably think,

you know, out there on a sales people.

They, they, yeah.

So you are following, the good, the good, um, the ethical, the do

it the right way for the customer.

So that, and I, I listen to Leah where it's um, it should be win-win.

Whereas I think Leah you mentioned in a previous podcast, sometimes if you get

too close to a, um, client and you're helping them, the radio station might

think, oh, you're in their court now.

No, you help.

It's win-win for both.

You can't, you know, you have to have that relate-good relationship.

Mm-Hmm.

So I think the North Star is, where do you want to go now?

I don't work with people who have, uh, want to take it to the dark side.

Um, I had one client who they came on board and they were in selling,

selling homes, investment properties.

And once I did an uncovering with them and started talking to

'em, I found this is not ethical.

Or it just, it didn't fit with me, it didn't fit with

my values, and I let them go.

That no.

And I thought, I can't help these people promote these people if I don't believe in

them and if I don't, um, trust like them.

So that's, every business person has got their own North Star, basically.

And it's not, don't confuse it with a destination.

The destination is, um, if I'm leaving the harbor, I want to get to America.

Um, or if, you know, I want to come to the States, I want to go to Austin, to Wizard

Academy, that's, that's the destination.

Um, but they are similar but a destination sometimes is just, can be money.

In business.

Um, whereas a North Star is more valuable, it's always out, out of touch.

It's always why you can never reach it.

That that's why it was such a perfect match.

The people who are listening and watching and that are attracted to this podcast

and you are, you know, the people that would want to read your book, which is

why Dennis and I wanted to interview you, Dennis, I think we have to get.

Craig will on again.

I think we need another session with Craig just to get into some of the details.

Oh my heaven.

Because my heaven, we could keep going here.

My heavens.

Yes.

We have just not even scratched the surface, but, uh, would you

be up for another session, sir?

Certainly, certainly.

I don't want to commit to it unless you do.

Okay.

It's done.

All right.

We're there.

We'll do another story.

I'm holding it here so that people can see it.

Which direction do I go?

Okay, that is the book, the gentleman from down under with the

lovely australian accent is Craig Arthur.

He is a fellow Wizard of Ads partner, and the book is How to Win The Heart's

Money and Loyalty of Profitable Customers 101 Relational Marketing Principles.

Every page is a gem.

This is Dennis Collins and Leah Bumphrey signing off of this

edition of Connect and Convert.

We'll see you next time.

Thanks, Craig.